In many cases, hypodermic syringes are used to deliver medication to patients. These syringes typically include various “dead-spaces” within the syringe between various components of the syringe. A dead-space is an area that may contain a substance that is not generally delivered to a patient during an injection. For example, a typical syringe can trap medication between the end of the plunger and the wall of the syringe or within an end portion of the syringe that holds the needle, but is smaller in diameter than the plunger.
Small quantities of drugs can be wasted because of these dead-spaces. Due to the great expense of certain drugs, even a small amount of wasted material per vial or container is magnified when viewed in terms of the total number of vials or containers sold. Also, because the use of syringes is very common, small amounts of wasted drugs can add up to a large amount when aggregated together. Additionally, trapping higher quantities of these drugs may make it more likely that the drugs get into the environment if they are later able to escape from the discarded syringes. Accordingly, it can be beneficial to design, manufacture, and use syringes that reduce dead-spaces.
Further, in many cases it can be expensive to dispose of used syringes. If a single piece syringe is used to administer a drug to a patient, the volume of waste that includes needles can be high. Additionally, after coming into contact with a patient or a patient's bodily fluids the waste must be disposed of as biological waste. Syringes that include a separable needle portion and syringe body portion, however, may still be expensive to dispose of because, while the volume of waste that includes needles may be lower, both portions are biological waste after the needle and the syringe come into contact with a patient or a patient's bodily fluids.
Additionally, needles can be dangerous to handle and work with. Needle sticks can be common and may lead to the spread of disease from, for example, a patient to a medical worker. Accordingly, it may be beneficial to use medical delivery systems that eliminate or limit the number of needles used to provide a drug or other substance to a patient intravenously, or by other methods that involve piercing the skin, e.g., injection directly into the muscle.